CHAPTER XI
THE MEXICAN LABORER: HIS WAGES AND DEMANDS
In spite of the fact that nominal wages, as is indicated above, have so little relation to the real return to the Mexican laborer, a sketch is given here of the payments made at various periods in different parts of the republic.[1] In some cases it is doubted whether the real wage in later years was any better than in the earlier part of the Diaz régime. Taken as a whole, however, it appears beyond question that the laborer was better paid at the end of the period than at its beginning. Only scattered statements can be obtained indicating the nominal wage rates in any pursuits at any time in Mexico. Humboldt reported in 1804 that the agricultural laborer received about 28 cents per day. In 1884, at the beginning of the railroad era, Adolph F. Bandelier reported that the Mexican received daily "as farm laborer 25 to 31¼ cents; as railroad hand 50 cents." David A. Wells reported in 1887 that the wages of ordinary farm hands were from 18 to 25 cents per day, the better class of adults receiving 37 cents per day. The survey undertaken by the Mexican government, the results of which were published in 1885-7, showed a wider range—wages for men being in some cases as low as 12 cents and in others as high as $1.50 Mexican. In 1893 the Two Republics, an English paper published in Mexico, stated: "It is officially announced that the average daily wage in this country is 27 cents." The paper declared that this was "probably at least 10 cents more than it was 20 years ago." In 1896 Matias Romero, one of the best Mexican authorities, stated that the average wage of day laborers was about 37½ cents.
Industrial wages have risen with the growth of Mexican industry. Official statistics showing the usual payments at various periods are not available. A study made just before the conditions of the old régime were upset reported about 117,992 persons as engaged in industry, of whom 100,717 were men and 17,275 women.[2] The political divisions from which the greatest number of industrial workers were reported were, in order, Vera Cruz, the Federal District, Nuevo Leon, Jalisco, Puebla, Oaxaca, Mexico, and Michoacan. The least industrial regions were Tamaulipas, Lower California, Colima, Campeche, Chiapas, and Yucatan. Industrial wages were highest in the states which had the greater industrial development. The higher wages for men and for women were found in the states bordering the United States and in those in which the stimulus of foreign enterprise had most deeply affected the local life. This contrast is true, indeed, in agricultural as well as industrial wages. There was a wide difference between the highest and lowest wages in the same states. In many cases the better paid received five and even eight times as much as the poorest. Women were paid much less than men—as a rule rather less than the class of men workers who were most poorly paid.[3]
The highest wage reported as paid to any Mexican laborers in industrial work was $3.00, the lowest 12 cents. The highest wage for women was $1.50, the lowest six cents. No attempt is made to state an average—in fact the conditions surrounding Mexican labor are such that no estimate has great value. The lowest figures announced above, for example, may be for children and represent but few individuals. The highest were paid, it appears, in comparatively few cases.
The practice in individual industrial establishments or groups of establishments gives the best illustration of the upward trend of wages. In 1906, wages for adults in El Oro mine varied from 37½ to 50 cents a day. It seems to be the general consensus of opinion that prior to the revolution the average daily wage for farm laborers was about 50 cents. Unskilled laborers on the railroads received from 62½ cents to $1.75 a day.
Laborers in the oil regions about Tampico received 75 cents a day in 1908-9 and $2.00 and even $3.00 in 1914. The average wage of several thousand laborers in this district was announced as $2.10. In the mining districts wages ranged as high as $1.70 to $2.50 per day, the average for the whole industry being not less than $1.00.[4]
The payrolls of one of the largest American construction companies operating in Mexico show that the prevailing wages of their peon laborers in 1909 and 1910 was $1.25. In 1911, the average was almost $1.50. In 1912-13, the average fell gradually, reaching $1.25 in the latter year. These figures are in Mexican currency, equal to about half the same amounts in United States gold.
The tendency of wages, both the nominal money payments and the actual return, during the Diaz régime, so far as indicated by the information available, seems to have been steadily upward. As a rule, the rates of payment were lower in the more thickly settled uplands. The highest average payments, these individual cases, like the general survey previously cited, seem to show, were found in the unhealthy lowlands and in the northern states where proximity to the United States and the prevalence of undertakings by foreign capital appear to have had a favorable effect. As a rule, the wages of laborers working for foreign corporations in the northern states were higher than those paid elsewhere. The mining and oil companies showed the highest average. The textile mills paid less but still at a rate appreciably above that for agricultural labor.
The wage conditions created by the revolution were so abnormal that a study of them does not allow any general estimate as to whether they were higher or lower than those paid before. Striking contradictions present themselves on every side. Wages—nominal wages—in some parts of the country remained stationary for months in the face of a rapidly depreciating currency. In such cases, of course, the laborer, since the nominal cost of living went steadily up, received less and less. As one employer in the Puebla district has declared: "the men kept on working for months when a week's wages would not have bought them a bowl of beans." When the readjustment to the depreciated currency came, there had occurred also such an unsettling of prices that nothing can be stated as to the actual effect on the economic status of the laboring classes.
In this and other regions, when the local peasantry refused to continue work on the plantations at the old rates, the employers who were able to keep control of their property and keep it going had to raise the wages several hundred fold, in many cases so much as to constitute a real as well as a nominal increase.
In still other areas the laboring classes, or those who claimed to represent them, having secured control of the government, were able to profit by the peculiar circumstances of the local industry and to demand extortionate prices for whatever labor they performed. The best example of this condition was found in Yucatan. The spectacular rise in the price of sisal, due to the conditions created by the World War, and the exploitation of the hacendados by the revolutionary government put the agricultural laborers in a position to demand wages comparable to those paid before the war in highly developed industries in Europe and the United States. Prices were also extortionate. Ice cream sold at the equivalent of 45 cents United States currency a plate, chewing gum at five cents a stick, pears at 40 cents apiece, and small tin cans of fruit at $1.50 apiece. Yet, for the time being, the most feverish prosperity was evident everywhere. The Chinese laundrymen used automobiles to deliver their customers' shirts, mestiza market women drove up and down the fashionable promenades of Mérida, the state capital, in coaches, and the local hotels charged prices far above those of similar character in New York or Paris. For the former peon, however, though the prices of what he consumed had also risen, the revolution, because of his increased wages, was at least a temporary advantage.
The old régime once upset is never reestablished but it seems clear that coming back to work in time of peace, in many parts of Mexico, will necessitate painful sacrifice on the part of the laborer of many of the exceptional conditions he enjoyed during the upheaval of the revolution. It is equally clear, however, that the low wage level of pre-revolutionary days has gone forever.
The labor union movement in Mexico was only beginning in the years before the revolution. The government was indifferent to the rights of labor and discouraged rather than favored the efforts of the workmen to improve their conditions. The first important development occurred among railway laborers, whose union dates from 1904. There developed also, in connection with the nationalization of the railroads, a movement for the nationalization of the railway service. A policy was introduced, by which no more Americans were taken on in the railway service, though those already employed were allowed to stay. At first the new rule was applied to the lower ranks. The change to Mexican service came more rapidly than the rule demanded, since many of the Americans would not stay under the conditions that soon surrounded their work. As a result, by the end of the old régime, Americans occupied, with a few exceptions, only the higher executive positions. In other industries, especially textile manufacture, labor organizations sprang up but had only a weak and, almost without exception, ephemeral existence before the revolution. Even as late as 1908 the president of the Grand League of Railroad Workers reported the unions as including only the Grand League of Railroad Workers, 10,000 members; the mechanics' union, 500; the boilermakers' union, 800; the cigar-makers' union, 1,500; the carpenters' union, 1,500; the shop blacksmiths' union, 800; and the steel and smelter workers' union, 600.[5]
During the revolution, labor organization increased rapidly. Unions of all sorts sprang up overnight under the leadership of men who recognized not at all the limitations of those in whose interests they professed to be working. Workers in mines and textile industries, stevedores, public employees, clerks, barbers, street car men, coachmen, waiters, and a large number of other groups, formerly unorganized, had their unions and, under the most irresponsible leadership, made demands upon the employers. This kept labor conditions generally in a turmoil.
The years of the revolution, with the exception of the period of control of Huerta, are ones in which there has been a rapid growth of labor legislation. The Madero government announced itself the champion of the downtrodden, particularly of the laboring classes. The Carranza government professed even greater enthusiasm in their defense and improvement of the condition of the laborer has been at least nominally a part of the political problem of its successors. The Madero government created a Bureau of Labor, which subsequently became a Department. It intervened in a number of strikes and succeeded in getting better hours and wages for the laborers in the textile industry. No important labor legislation was passed in the latter part of the period of Madero's control, though a large number of proposals were made to Congress.
When the radicals came back under Carranza, the demand for labor legislation became insistent in both the central and the state governments. The supporters of the government included the great majority of the young radicals. The measures taken with the announced intent of helping the workers had a wide range and were often little short of fantastic in their operation. It is impossible to digest them. Examples illustrate their general trend. There were efforts to prohibit bullfights, cockfights, lotteries, the pulque trade and even all liquor production. Not all the country would follow the lead of those who wished to do away with these alleged harmful diversions, and some states, which professed to do so, did not enforce the laws passed strictly. The effort to do away with the pulque trade in the federal district, for example, became one to reduce the number of shops where it was dispensed. Yucatan, which boasted itself a dry state, was so on little more than the surface.
Besides these general social legislation measures, there were others designed to benefit labor at the expense of the hacendados, and factory and mine owners, and, in fact, all the interests that were looked upon as representing the capitalistic régime recently overthrown. Hours of labor for men, women, and children; rates of wages; peons' wages; peons' debts; employers' liability; settlement of industrial disputes; the holding of large estates; and an indefinite list of similar subjects were regulated by new legislation. Often these measures adopted the most advanced standards of legislation found in European countries or the United States, too frequently they aimed to put into effect the extreme demands of the ultra radicals in these countries. There was little consideration given to the question of the applicability of the proposed standards to Mexican conditions.
Of course, some measures could be forced upon the interests affected under threats, such as confiscation of property or the taking over of its operation by the local governmental authorities. Others, for example, those involving land settlements, could be pushed through by taking property under at least the form of legal process and distributing it to the persons, whose rights, it was alleged, former legislation had disregarded. This, for example, was done in numerous cases in the State of Puebla. In other cases the legislation was so unsuited to local conditions that it resulted in little more than arousing the hopes of the laborers only to disappoint them and to make social conditions on that account increasingly difficult.
While these developments were in process, the Constitution of 1917 was adopted. It reflected the conditions amid which it was drafted. Many subjects that are obviously ones that should be handled by legislative authority were crystallized into the new "fundamental law" in the attempt to guarantee to the humbler classes of the population rights that it was feared would not be assured if left to be guaranteed by ordinary legislation.
It is not to be wondered at if the agitators of the revolution found the Mexican laboring classes fertile ground for propaganda. The agricultural laborer, who is still the typical laborer in Mexico, had little to lose by the disturbance of the social order. He received the minimum of subsistence and a revolutionary band offered him at least that plus diversion which, even if of a rough sort, furnished an acceptable contrast to his daily life. Though he was not at heart dissatisfied, the glowing picture which the revolutionist orators painted was so attractive that it overcame his native conservatism. That such men joined the revolution blindly and without a clear conception of what their specific grievances were, nor of the means by which they could be righted, is doubtless true. That they joined at all is significant. The fact that there could be aroused within them a spirit of revolt against the conditions under which they lived was an indication of the possibility of awakening new desires, which, properly guided, may prove one of the means through which the economic life of Mexico may be transformed and the foundation laid for a new system of government more nearly approaching the democratic standards to which Mexico aspires.
Among industrial workers there appears to have been less voluntary enlistment in revolutionary activities proper but the disturbed conditions, which marked the passing of the old régime, were not without important effects upon their labor conditions also. The changing fortunes of the revolutionary leaders brought to various industries alternating periods of great activity and slack work. Labor organizers found those working in industry ready listeners, as easily molded as the peons. Long established custom was being broken down all around them. This was the dawn of a new day. The standards of hours, wages, and living conditions enjoyed by laborers in other lands were pictured in glowing colors. The Mexican workman could enjoy the same blessings if he would but reach out his hands.
That there were abuses in the industrial life of Mexico, even though it was but little developed, is beyond dispute. The quickest way to bring remedy to wrongs of which any class is conscious is, of course, for that class to put pressure on those responsible and this the industrial workers were assured was their opportunity. Unfortunately the labor leadership in Mexico, even if of good intentions, was far from wise. It was, it appears, chiefly of Mexican origin, irresponsible and leading an impressionable following, whose hopes all the revolutionary' governments appear to have done much to encourage. It is not to be wondered at if the conditions that developed were often weird in the extreme.
In the textile mills, for example, syndicates set out on an ambitious program the most remarkable thing about which, considering the character of the elements from which it received its support, is not that it has not worked with any marked degree of success but that it had the measure of success it did achieve. The unions forced from the mill owners successive increases of pay, they put pressure on the workers that made them all join the syndicate. They succeeded in unionizing shops with remarkable rapidity. They established resistance funds by levy on the income of each man, which were used not only for carrying on the fight against the local employer, but even in aiding the strikes of fellow workmen in other cities—witness the support furnished by the workmen of the Rio Blanco Mills to those of Puebla in 1918.
The extreme methods of class warfare were common. Sabotage by cutting of cloth in the textile mills was frequent. Theft of yarn and cloth reached a point never before approached. Inspection was ineffectual because inspectors were intimidated. The guilty caught in the act could not be convicted, because the laborers controlled the courts. In the old days the workers declared they were nothing in the government and the employers were everything. Now the shoe was on the other foot.
Neither the leadership of these movements nor their methods deserve approval. Neither could have had such wide success as they achieved among a working population truly awake to its own interests and dealing with responsible government anxious to advance the interests of the people it served.
Nevertheless, here as in the protest of the agricultural population, although the dissatisfaction with old conditions resulted in a following of irresponsible and ill-advised leadership and the adoption of indefensible methods to try to secure laudable ends, the fact that the dissatisfaction with the old system did result in protest is encouraging. A laboring population that meekly accepts every rule made by the employer is servile. The first requisite for a fair adjustment between employers and employed is the recognition by both that each has rights and responsibilities.
Before the Mexican laborer can enjoy the solid benefits that should come to him from the break-up of the old régime and enter a working world in which he will enjoy greater independence and greater rights than he has had heretofore, he must unlearn much of what his teachers have taught him. He must first of all learn that greater independence means greater responsibility and that privileges are paid for by sacrifice. The old system had much that was indefensible about it, the ideals toward which his self-appointed leaders turned his ambition were often impractical. Those who are intelligently to lead the Mexican laboring classes to refuse to allow the return of the old abuses and to avoid new ones have a delicate task before them. It is one that is the more difficult because of the present limitations of those whom they attempt to serve.
- ↑ See Wallace Thompson, The People of Mexico, New York, 1921, pp. 348-370.
- ↑ Of course, since there are no official statistics available for the making of which "industry" is closely defined, such statements as the above can only approximate the truth. There is no way of telling, for example, whether any attempt was made to include small household industries, though it appears they cannot have been covered.
- ↑ These comparisons are based on tables in Erie Gunther, Handbuch von Mexico, Leipzig, 1912, p. 179 et seq. The wage figures are in Mexican currency.
- ↑ The figures in this paragraph are quoted and summarized from a discussion by W. B. Parker, of S. Pearson and Son, 280 Broadway, New York.
- ↑ From figures published by John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico, Chicago, 1910.